Thank you, Rich and good morning, everyone.
As Rick highlighted net sales in the second quarter were $357.4 million. A 15% decrease year over year 13% when excluding A T&M foreign exchange had a near zero impact on sales in Q2 on a sequential basis. However, sales were down 5% compared to Q1 driven by declines in both the medical and industrial verticals partially offset by a low single digit increase in automotive.
The growth margin rate in Q2 was 6.6%. A 160 basis point decline compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2024. With the decrease coming from lower absorption. A result of declining sales adjusted selling and administrative expense in the second quarter was $10.1 million. A $5.3 million or 34% reduction compared to the $15.4 million.
We reported in Q2 last year, the decrease was driven by our efforts to align discretionary spending with current demand, lower bonus expense along with not A T&M expense this year compared to a full quarter in fiscal 2024.
In addition, if you recall a year ago, we recorded a $ all 2 millionowance for credit losses which was not required again when measured as a percentage of sales adjusted selling and administrative expenses were 2.9% and 80 basis point improvement compared to 3.7% in Q2 last year.
Our expectation for SG&A as a percentage of net sales remains 3.5%. Although there will be fluctuations at times as we look to right size expense prudently. While we work through the current environment adjusted operating income for the second quarter was $13.3 million or 3.7% of net sales, which compares to last year's adjusted results of $19.1 million or 4.5% of net sales. As a reminder, we have adopted the industry norm of excluding stock compensation expense from the calculation this metrics.
The result from last year has been recast to reflect this change.
Other income and expense was expense of $4.8 million compared to $5.3 million of expense. Last year. With the reduction being driven by lower interest expense down 31% year over year.
The effective tax rate was 1.2% in the second quarter compared to 26.5% in Q2 of fiscal 2024.
This is due primarily to the reversal of a valuation allowance as we reconcile the anticipated closure of our Tampa facility with the sale of the A T&M business.
We expect a tax rate in the mid 20s for the full fiscal year adjusted net income in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 was $7.4 million or $0.29 per diluted share compared to adjusted net income in Q2 last year of $9.8 million or $0.39 per diluted share.
Turning now to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at December 31st, 2024 were $53.9 million. Cash flow generated by operating activities in the quarter was $29.5 million. Our fourth consecutive quarter of positive cash flow cash conversion days were 107 days compared to 117 days.
In Q2 of fiscal 2024 and 108 days. Last quarter, we are continuing to focus on improving cash conversion days by actively managing the components and are pleased with our progress. Thus far, inventory ended the quarter at $306.2 million which represents a $29 million reduction compared to Q1 and $149 million or 33% lower than a year ago.
Again, we're pleased with our progress in reducing inventory and we'll continue to work with our customers to right size to the current demand outlook.
Capital expenditures in the second quarter were $6.5 million balance between maintenance requirements and investment and long term growth.
Borrowings at December 31st, 2024 were $205 million a $41 million reduction from the first quarter and down 90 million or 30% from the beginning of the fiscal year.
Short term liquidity available represented as cash and cash equivalents plus the unused portion of our credit facilities totaled $280.3 million at the end of the second quarter.
This is a great example of controlling what we can control and setting up our balance sheet for future growth.
It is important to highlight that during Q2, we significantly enhanced our capital structure with the amendment of the credit facility replacing the $100 million side car that was up for renewal in January with a term loan a of the same amount and with a pricing grid that mirrors the revolver.
The TL A provides additional domestic liquidity for investments needed to meet working capital and other operating needs as well as supporting our efforts to grow the business through organic and inorganic channels.
The term loan A has a tender that is off cycle from the revolver and we added a new lender to the syndicate.
I would like to thank all of our banking partners for their ongoing support as well as our team here at Jasper for their hard work diligence and patience needed on this transaction particularly given much of the heavy lift occurred during the holiday season.
In the second quarter, we invested $3 million to repurchase 160,000 shares since October 2015. Under our board authorized share repurchase program, a total of $97.7 million has been returned to our shareholders by purchasing 6.3 million shares of common stock.
We have $22.3 million remaining on the repurchase program.
During the November meeting of the board of directors, the board unanimously increased the share repurchase program by $20 million.
As Rick mentioned, we are updating our guidance for fiscal year 2025 with net sales now expected to be in the range of $1.4 to $1.44 billion compared to the previous guidance of $1.44 to $1.5554 billion adjusted operating income is estimated at 3.4 to 3.6% of net sales. Compared to our previous guidance of 4 to 4.5% of net sales.
The outlook for capital expenditures remains unchanged at 40 to $50 million.
And in addition, we now estimate total exit costs associated to the closing of the facility in Tampa in the range of 6.5 to $8.5 million. And we fully expect the proceeds from the sale of the property to exceed the exit cost. I'll now turn the call back over to Rich.
Thanks Joanna.
As you know, President Trump issued three executive orders implementing tariffs on February 1st on virtually all goods from China Mexico and Canada, which have now been paused 30 days. In the case of Mexico and Canada, we are partnering with our customers to understand the impacts and to determine the best solutions in the short term and the long term for their supply chains.
Our Mexico facility exports approximately 25 to 30% of its production into the United States.
Our US facilities import certain components from China, Mexico and Canada on our customers' behalf to use in manufacturing their products.
There are a variety of options we will continue to review with our customers. Our customers may be able to change Kimball's final delivery location, shift production to another Kimball facility or pay the tariffs.
We are also evaluating the impact to our supply chains including the goods we import into the US that support manufacturing in our US locations as you would expect given our guiding principles and our reputation for customer service. Kimball stands ready to support our overall supply chain and our customers as they navigate the significant development.
Lastly, I'd like to recognize our team for once again being honored by circuits assembly service excellence Awards in November. We achieved the highest overall customer rating in all seven categories of dependability and timely delivery, manufacturing, quality, responsiveness, technology value for the price, flexibility and overall satisfaction.
These awards are based solely on direct customer input and I'm very proud of our team's consistent focus on building long term relationships with all customers regardless of whether they are new or those we've worked with for a decade or more.
The Kimball team is well known for our culture driven by our guiding principles and a common set of priorities that have allowed us to continuously improve and to keep our promises. Even during the most challenging of times, with customer demand, continuing to soften in the markets
we support and the timing of a recovery in our core Ems business becoming increasingly more difficult to predict and likely continuing through calendar year 2025 we have intensified our efforts to broaden our capabilities and role as AC MMO with a strong balance sheet of pursuing different paths of growth focused on emerging medical technologies, high level assemblies and a variety of drug device combinations as I mentioned earlier.
However, these changes will not come overnight, but I'm excited for the future of the company and thank you for your support, Darryl. We would now like to open the lines for questions.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, analysts may ask a question at this time by simply pressing star one on your dial pad. You may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two on your dial pad.
We ask that if you are using a speaker phone, you pick up your handset before asking your question. One moment, please. For the first question, our first questions come from the line of Derek Soderberg with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah. Hey, everyone Thanks for taking my questions. You know, it seems like you're continuing to navigate this environment pretty well here. Congrats on reducing those borrowings. Just a question tariffs to start, is there a level of tariffs where it wouldn't make sense to move production back even at 25%?
Is it still better to manufacture there versus Jasper? You know, how should we think about that 25% number? Even, at 25% would, you still consider moving some of that production to Jasper? I? And then on top of that, what, what sort of the utilization rate in Jasper today? And how much free capacity do you have there in that event? And then I've got a follow up.
Hey, Derek, this is Steve Corn. Let me try to answer that for you. You know, we've done some analysis for a few customers on that 25% with the tariffs coming from China, additional tariffs there plus the ones that were there previously. First Trump administration with the Biden administration did. It's still more cost effective for more pro most products to be done in Mexico with those additional tariffs if required, we would see a better solution, potentially moving business to Thailand in eliminating both the terrorists from Mexico and China at that time.
Got it. That's, that's helpful. It is, And then Jana. So, inventory is, is getting reduced. Like I said, you're, paying down some of that debt balance sheets in a good place. You know, how much more room do we have here on inventory, inventory to work with? How do you expect that to trend over the next few quarters here? And then where do you see cash conversion days moving towards? How's that trending? Thanks.
Well, Steve and I will tag team this one together because what I was going to say is at this point, the focus is on days more than it is absolute dollars of reduction. You know, your, your inventory, if you think about it, this way should be a function of revenue in terms. And so, we've done a great job of rightsizing the inventory, bringing it down as we've seen our revenue come down.
You know, obviously sitting at 100 and seven days isn't where we want to be, but we're very, very pleased with the progress we've made thus far, pulling 10 days out versus a year ago a day lower than we were last quarter. We're continuing to work with our customers to see, what the right sizing is going to continue to look like. You know, at some point, we're going to start to grow again, and you may see inventory in absolute dollars increase.
But it's, it's really the day management. I would like it if it was not a three-digit number, if it was a two-digit number, I don't know what you have to add with that. Yeah.
I think you know what we see, Derek is, our internal data shows. The inventory is going to continue to drop over the next six and 12 months as we burn through some of the inventory that we bought some of that was with the agreements that our customers had with the supplier. So we continue to see a positive trend going forward on the inventory reducing.
That's great. Really appreciate it. Thanks.
Operator
Yes.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Mike Crawford with B Riley Securities. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you.
How should we track what you're doing to start winning the winnable? Like is there a bid proposal pipeline you can quantify or when rate on bid submitted or anything like that?
Yeah. So, Mike, we are in the process now of working with our Chief Commercial Officer to begin disclosing more information the funnel and win rates. We're looking at what our competitors disclose and how we can capture our data in a way that would be more valuable to you.
So we hear you loud and clear and that is something that we are actively working on and you should look for us to roll out in the coming quarters. I don't know if it will be Q3 or if we might roll it out in Q4 along with FY26 guidance but, but we understand that we need to help you understand, funnel win rates and future opportunity for Kimball for modeling purposes.
And so, in that regard, you might not give us that answer three months from now and then we might not, we might have to wait six months before we get fiscal '26 guidance.
Is that what you're saying?
So I'm interpreting that as Jana hurry up. And, and we hear you and so we'll, we will definitely work on that for next quarter or in.
Oh okay. You know, and I know you're not providing fiscal '26 guidance right now, but where we stand today without knowing what your funnel is and seeing programs drop off, it's hard to model fiscal '26 being any higher than fiscal '25. But how would, how, how do you, how would you look at that logic?
Followable logic, Mike, I think the, as you know, and you know, as we mentioned earlier in the call, you know, this sustained customer demand weakness has been longer than we anticipated, and it's been more difficult to predict the stabilization. So, as you can imagine, we're all over it. We spend, a ton of time as a team on the funnel and the future and, and not just the future funnel of win.
But the return to more stable levels on the programs that we already want that are just happened to be delivering it at lower numbers of demand that are there. But, but I don't think your way off, and, and where we hope to update that over the coming months, but the softness has sustained to your point.
Calendar 25 is going to be difficult. What we're looking at now, which would take you through the first half of of fiscal '26.
What we're looking at now is everything that's launching in the back half of fiscal '26 which would be calendar 26 in terms of stabilization and then return to growth. And we're not prepared to get into the details of that now because we still got more data coming in as we're trying to shore up the 12 month forecast. But we'll continue to give you the information as we know it in the coming earnings call.
Oh, okay. Thank you. And then I don't think I heard the answer to the jasper utilization and maybe you could frame that in terms of different ships or potential incremental investment there.
Yeah, I think in the jasper utilization is probably right now around 65% utilization. We paired down some shifts. We basically work there 24 7 Mike, but we do have space and capacity available obviously,
we're moving that some of the Tampa work into Jasper as we speak and then we do have space for other customers and and have been reached out to by other customers about potentially doing some of the work they do in Mexico that we're not doing for them right now, but that they do in Mexico and having to move to Jasper. So we're in those discussions as we speak.
Okay. Well, that sounds like a good potential increase to the funnel. So, thank you very much.
Operator
Yeah, thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Jason Schmidt with Lake Street capital markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. Just looking at the revised guidance for fiscal '25. Is this being driven by one particular vertical or is it just broadbased softness across the entire business?
We're seeing broadbased softness, but Autos is holding in even with the exit of the Ed 100 program, autos is holding in quite well driven by, strength in Asia. We're still waiting for our, our medical and our industrial verticals to sort of get their sea legs around them. And I would say that that is likely to continue over the next few quarters.
Got you and Jen, I know you just laid out that you're going to be providing some additional metrics in the future. But just curious when you look at the bookings activity in the December quarter, if it was in line with your guys' internal expectations, or has there been a deterioration in sort of bookings activity both in December and now here in the March quarter.
Hey, Jason, I'll answer that. What we've seen over the last six months is our bookings have been in line with our expectations, both with new business as well as, you know, some extensions of current business. So they are in line with what our expectations were in the first six months of the fiscal year.
Okay. That's really helpful. And then last question from me and I'll jump back into Q when we think about sort of the restructuring and the OpEx rationalization is this sort of 10.5 million in selling and administration expenses for the new run, right, going forward.
We're likely not going to be able to hold it that low for a sustained period of time. What we're trying to figure out is what is the discretionary balance. So, part of the challenge quite H1stly is there are some real inflationary pressures related to our business for costs like insurance, health care, et cetera. And so, we've done a lot of discretionary cuts to try and offset those and reduce them down further.
But there are limitations to all of the things that we can take off the table as those costs continue to mount. Our goal is 3.5% of net sales. But we as a leadership team also feel very, very strongly that it can't just be all on the facilities to reduce costs, right? So corporate spending has to be tamed as well and we have to be really, really good partners globally as we look to contain costs.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks guys.
Operator
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Anja Sters with Sidoti. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions and most of them have been answered already. But I'm just curious when you talk about the refocus on the medical vertical. Are you making any changes to your organization for that or?
Yes. So we Hi Anja Sters. Good to, good to hear from you. Yes. So we at the, at the time when we made the decision that we were going to move forward with the position of the A T&M business. At that same time, we actually took what that point was a, was a third pillar of the company, which is our drug delivery business that's really focused on CMO, and we moved that together with our core Ems medical vertical.
And that was, we felt like a really important move for, for multiple reasons, both in terms of leadership, talent and collaboration and engagement and also to bring together the very complementary capabilities of those two. And we think in a, in a pretty differentiated way. So, we did make that change from a, from an actual structure standpoint.
And that's how we are going to market there. And, and so we've got the full force of our business development team in Ems now collaborating to help target that space. So, yeah, we did make a structural change
And we're excited about what we're seeing there. And I as you know, it takes time you know, to from wins to convert to $2 on the P&L but we're really encouraged and we're investing there and we like the profile that business as well as the market growth rates that we see over time in that business, in medical.
Okay, thank you. And then in the industrial is like the smart media to decision is still hurting you. When do you think that's going to bottom out and how much of how much of our revenue contribution was that once and, and where, where do you think it will end up?
Let me try to answer that for you. Anja, I think from a total revenue standpoint, the smart metering business, if you look at our total revenue globally, you know, based off of 1.41 0.5 billion run rates, that smart metering business might have been 2 to 3% of that number. We think where we're running today is, is the bottom from where we're at, we're seeing a little bit of positive activity there.
But I would say we're at the bottom and, but it's still very competitive. I don't know if we'll see a significant amount of growth in that part of our, of our industrial, but we have other opportunities in the industrial where we see growth.
Okay, thank you. And then, have you seen any changes to the competitive environment at all?
You know, that's a really good question. I think, what we've seen recently both in the competitive environment and other environments is and which has been a little bit different is some of our, our automotive customers providing opportunity to move product from some of our competitors to us. So a little quicker ramp, we're, we're seeing more of that activity right now.
Not quite sure why that's probably been a little unique for us. And then overall the competitive environment depends upon where we're at in the world. You know, like it's been, I've been in Ems for 37 years. It's competitive as it's always been and sometimes it's a little bit more competitive if somebody has excess capacity somewhere. So I wouldn't say it's significantly different than what we saw before.
And just in general, the outsourcing trend, we did see that outside increasing now. And maybe you were talking about some people wanting to move their production in Mexico to your pro your facility in Jasper. I mean.
Yeah, and I think as Rick stated early with the medical HL A, we're seeing more, more in that opportunity of, of opportunities of people moving out, not wanting to do the full manufacturing deal with all of the FDA you know, manufacturing requirements. The GM P I think is what we're seeing more activity. I think this, this opportunity with Mexico, who knows where it's going to land on March 1st and you know, I think we all got to take the current administration serious when they say something,
we learned that in the first time they were in place with the tariffs on China that those opportunities are going to happen as people look at their own manufacturing footprint and, and where is the right place to put it and where Kimball can help them be successful.
So, I think that's going to continue until we get through some of these, these potential tariffs and trade wars and where is the right place to put, put manufacturing and some are going to offset that with.
Yeah, and some are going to offset it with. Hey, we want to do a portion of it in the US to be prepared and we're going to keep the rest in Mexico or somewhere else. I think that's where we're going to see some activity.
Okay. Thanks.
Operator
You. That was all for me.
Thank you as a reminder if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your dial pad.
Our next questions come from the line of Hendi Susanto Gabelli Funds. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning. My first questions, would you be able to remind us like how much exposure you have in China automotive market between local versus foreign O Ems?
Yes. So what what we've seen, a lot as Rick stated, Hindi, we had, we had a fantastic fourth quarter of the calendar year. Our, our, our highest revenue ever. What we're seeing is we're continuing to, to grow with the local O Ems, the local Chinese manufacturers is where we see that growth with our customers.
So today, I would say we're probably somewhere around 5,050 of foreign versus local, but it's the fastest growth for us is with the local manufacturers.
And then some companies do express confidence that their automotive business in China can continue to demonstrate positive growth despite of weaknesses in North America and Europe. Do you share that similar, similar confidence.
We're competent in our China operations competing and continuing to support the chinese auto market?
They have done a great job, and we see ourselves continuing to be a great supplier there for those customers.
And I know it's, we say this all the time and I'm sure you're aware of it, but maybe it's maybe worth restating because our board certainly asked us about it. But we're China for China, right? So that that product is staying in country. Well, we're manufacturing there. So it's a, it's a different risk profile, right? And thinking about that as a major export market, which is not for us.
And then I would like to learn more about the ramp up of breaking program in Romania which end market and what your grow fee and what vehicle categories will it serve when it's launched this year?
No, we can share all that information with, but it is, it is launched in, and it launched in January, as Rick said and continues to grow. Its, it's in its 1st month, but we see a good trend there. It's for the European market today. It's on ice vehicles.
There is a portion that will go to EV but the EV sales in Europe similar to North America are down. So today, most of what we're supporting our ice vehicles with that new braking platform.
Okay. That's very helpful. And then.
That the end customer is a German manufacturer. That's what we can share. Is that.
All?
Operator
Okay. Thank you for the, for that data point. And then the next question is about tariff if tariff takes place.
How much room of negotiation considering that pricing is part of the annual contract with customers?
Yeah, that's a good question, Anja, for the Mexico operation and what we manufacture in Mexico, as we, as we shared in the release, 75% of what we do in Mexico stays in Mexico. So, there's no tariffs for us on any of that product. And it goes to an end customers facility in Mexico, which they will add value to and then imported in or exported into the, to the US for us.
For what we ship into the US is an export to the US. And the customer will take ownership at the border and they would be responsible for the tariff cost on that portion of it for the component side of things. That's where the negotiation would come for the products that we build in Jasper Indianapolis or Tampa today. Yet, that's where the negotiations would come.
and you know, we learned a lot eight years ago with the first group of tariffs that, that the administration did with China, we have very good processes, and we've had really good discussions with our customers with that. So we feel confident that we'll be able to negotiate those costs with them.
Got it. Yeah. And then one last question, if you need to move a production to Thailand, how long the qualification process will take in general?
Yeah, that, that's different by customers. So one of the products we just moved out of Tampa as part of their tow is going to Thailand. That, that took us about 3.5 months to move that product and it's fully qualified now.
So maybe even a little bit shorter than that. But we started in November and here we sit in February and, and we're done. So it's a little about three months is a safe number depending upon the product, the specific tooling for that product and any qualification the customer side.
Okay. Thank you. And then all the best.
Operator
Thank you.
Thank you so much. That does conclude our question-and-answer session and with that ladies and gentleman, thank you for joining today's call. A replay of the call will be made available on the investor relations page on the Kimball Electronics website. You can access the replay by dialing 877,660,685,342,016,127,415. The replay will be available until February 19, 2025.
The access ID is 13,751,109.
Thank you again. You may now disconnect.
